Trevin Wax on Reconstructing Faith

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Jim Davis
Well, welcome to as in Heaven season three. I’m your host, Jim Davis. And I’m joined today by my co host, Michael Graham. You know, one of the things that makes our podcast unique is that we design each each season to have a narrative arc. So not unlike a true crime podcast, there is a clear beginning, there’s a middle, there’s an end, there will never be a podcast where I start out, welcome to episode 435, on D churching. And as we come to this last episode of the season, this is really important, because we’re talking about building on the Lego table. So let me explain that our goal with this podcast and what became our book, The Great D churching, is to start an extremely important national conversation, we want church leaders to understand that we are in the largest and fastest religious shift in the history of our country. And we believe that the truth is our friend, no matter how hard sometimes it is to look at and to see. But as we’ve seen in the season, the news isn’t all bad. There are real missional opportunities in front of us, we see this in the research. And so having said that, we are not under any impression that our work is going to single handedly fix the deep searching problem in America, we genuinely hope for others with expertises and experiences beyond ours, to take this conversation to places that either we haven’t or we really just can’t. So this is what we mean by building on the Lego table, my kids, I’m sure your kids Trevena know Mike’s kids at different times, I’ve had a Lego table, where it’s just it’s sitting there and people build kids build things on top of it. Our hope is that our research would be a type of Lego table. You know, I had a head of a friend we know who has an expertise and he came and asked me if if I wanted to co author a book in a different area of de churching. And he was just being nice not wanting to cringe on what he felt like it was my territory. And I said, No, this is your thing. I want you to do it like this makes me excited that you would run with it. And so today, we’re going to have another friend doing a similar thing that we want to highlight because Trevin wax is doing critical work to advance this conversation in really crucial ways. Now, I do want to be careful not to be condescending in the Lego illustration because our friend Trevin has been doing great work for the kingdom for many years, and we have personally benefited from his work. We had Trevin on season two to talk about multi directional leadership which was extremely helpful to us in a very difficult season in our church and 2020. If you’re not familiar with Trevon Trevin wax is the Vice President of Research and resource development at the North American Mission Board and a visiting professor at Cedarville University. A former missionary to Romania Trevon is a regular columnist at the gospel coalition has contributed to the Washington Post, Religion News Service world and Christianity today. He has served as the general editor of the gospel project, which we have used for many years and has taught courses on mission and ministry at Wheaton College. He is the author of multiple books, including The thrill of Orthodoxy, multi directional leader, rethink yourself. This is our time and gospel centered teaching. He and his wife Karina have three children. And man, we’re just really thankful to have you here again with us today.

Trevin Wax
I’m glad to be with you guys. Listen to every episode, there’s always something that I’m taking away from the conversations you guys have. So it’s an honor to be back.

Jim Davis
Thanks, man. Well, we appreciate your podcast, reconstructing faith, season one is out there season two is coming. And it intersects in such a unique way with with we’ve been doing you’re building on this conversation very important ways. And we want to use you as an example, inviting other people to build as well and inviting people to engage with what you’re doing through reconstructing faith. So first question, I want to take it at a 30,000 foot level, reconstructing faith and season one, you dove into the credibility crisis that the American church faces today. And you chose to take a narrative kind of a documentary style approach. You used a lot of 90s and early 2000s contemporary music clips as well. How did you land on this approach? Why are you using that in this medium?

Trevin Wax
Well, you know, I think podcasting is such an interesting art form. And it really is it really is an art in to do it. Well. It takes a lot of intentionality. And I think there are different kinds of podcasts out there that can appeal to different kinds of people. And I mean, I listen to various kinds and have over the years I’ve always appreciated like the radio show like this American life, I think about the way you guys are able to do excellent interviews was sort of a roundtable conversation because you’re you’re really familiar with your guests and the way that you interact with some of the concepts and some of the things things that you’re you’re wanting to put out on the table for discussion, and you’re hoping your listeners will take further. The thing with doing a documentary style sort of a narrative arc driven, each episode kind of a podcast for me is, I just, I think there’s something really special about bringing together types of media, and incorporating lots of things that may not, may not be able to come together in a typical podcast. I mean, I don’t think you’re expecting when you first listened to an episode, I’m just thinking of one off the top of my head in the in the, in the first season, where you’re, you’re going to hear, you know, an old DC talk song, an interview with Derrick Webb, Candace Cameron Burr, and the view and a lot of commentary and some great guests talking about, you know, what it means for us to pass down the faith to our kids, you know, like, that’s all in one episode. So there’s, and I’m thinking about this next episode. I mean, we’ve got everything from like, like a little clip from the British drama abroad, church and friends, like just opposed, right? Because because I think there’s something about bringing together these elements of culture and music, and church culture and music as well. And the guests that we have that if you can kind of put it all together, it can make for a really engaging listening experience. But it can also, instead of just saying, hey, the culture has shifted here, you know, like, for example, the way we talk about pornography? Well, the culture has shifted from the way friends addressed this in 1998, to the way a British crime drama addresses it in 2017, right? Instead of just saying, we’ve had a culture shift, you can throw in a couple of examples to say, look at look at how this is, is shifting. So I think there’s something unique about that, and interesting, and it takes a lot of work. And at the end of the day, you don’t do quite as many episodes, like some of the other kinds of podcasts. But I hope at the end, people feel really engaged with the content, and they’re able to think about things and you know, like you say, join you at the Lego table and be able to start putting some of these pieces together and thinking through what the future could look like for the church.

Mike Graham
I love the format that you have. It scares me, as somebody who does executive producing just the the daunting amount of post production required for something like that is is scary. I’m glad that we have the format that we do. But it’s good for you.

Trevin Wax
It scares me to every season when I’m looking at the the outline of like, you know, the next 1011 episodes, I was like, okay, the really hard part of thinking through these episodes is now done. And now the really hard part of having to actually do all the interviews and draft and put it all together is done. And now that we’re recording, it’s like now the really hard part of the post production begins with the team. So yeah, it’s just like, really hard part after one right after another, you know?

Mike Graham
Well, I’m glad because I think it’s it’s a gift and a blessing to the church to be able to do things in, you know, in that style. And in that medium. I think it’s powerful. Another thing I appreciated about the first season was just the the number and complexity of challenging subjects that you had there and reconstructing face season one. So it for those of you aren’t familiar, you know, topics like abusive leadership practices, social media, racial injustice, sexual abuse, purity, culture, political engagement, you know, all the easy conversations to have on our cultural moment. I’m curious, you know, I’m always curious when I’m talking to other people who make podcasts like, which of those episodes were kind of best received? And why do you think those particular episodes landed the way that they did?

Trevin Wax
Yeah, that’s a that’s a great question. I would say, when it comes to the number of comments we got, I think we probably got the most emails and comments on the purity culture episode, and the one about about leadership and authority in the church and authoritarianism. And I think the reason why we got the most feedback on those two is because we’ve got a lot of people right now who are wrestling with, how do I respond to real rot that’s in the church? Like, how do we ensure that we clean that rot out when it comes to some of the sort of prosperity gospel and tinged teachings with purity culture, or some of the authoritarian or abusive leadership practices and whatnot? How do we deal with that, but at the same time, don’t give away purity? Or don’t actually give away authority? Because authority at some level is I mean, the church is, is to be a place where good authority, like good authority is the answer and about authority. Right? So I think there are a lot of people right now, who are specifically and those are just two examples. And the way we we tried to do the podcast and I, I hope people recognize like, I’m a fellow traveler here. And if you guys can’t answer all the D churching. Questions in one season, I’m certainly not going to give all of the answers for how we can address purity culture, or the sex abuse scandals in one episode of one season, right. So I think we got to recognize, okay, we’re a fellow traveler, like you said, we’re sitting at The Lego table kind of we’re piecing some things together. But the goal is okay, how can we be constructive here? Because we can point out everything that the previous generation in the faith have gotten wrong on some of these things are some of the elements that need to be revised or adjusted or thrown out in some cases. I mean, we can talk about that all day long. We can rail against that all day long. But at the end of the day, the church is going to be here in 50 years. The question for me is like, okay, so what does that church going to look like? And if we’re going to build toward a healthier future for the church, then I mean, that’s our task. Like we really are reconstructing, like if if the credibility of the church has taken a beating in the last 50 years, well, then the next 50 years, our whole job is going to be in some sense, rebuilding, that, that credibility, rebuilding that witness to where we, we look more like Jesus that Jesus were proclaiming where we’re actually as a church, walking the walk, not just talking to talk, right. So I just wanted it to be as constructive as possible. And we did get some criticism. I mean, you expect to get criticism, but I think the most of the feedback we got, would go back to those two episodes, because there was there were a lot of follow up questions like, okay, so help me figure out how to do this. And not that, or what do you think about you know, are we? are we throwing pastors off the bus too quickly, in some cases, and not allowing for time for restoration and repentance? Are we exaggerating situations that are just sort of normal harm? situations that happen in everyday conflict and relationships? Calling that abuse? You know, are we watering down the definition of abuse? are we ignoring abuse, because we want to save the reputation of a pastor or we want to save the reputation of a church or whatnot? Like all of that complexity is built into those conversations and you just in even in an hour’s time talking to some great people on it, you can’t get to everything that you would get. And so I’d say in particular, those two episodes, we got a lot of feedback. I mean, one we got a lot of feedback on this people really enjoyed was, I got to teach at Oxford last fall and stay at CS Lewis house, the kilns and Justin Brierley, the even joke radio personality from from the UK, happened to drop by with another apologist and I gave them a tour of the cannons and he recorded it. And so we got to use that for one of the episodes that was just a fun to talk about apologetics and life lining up with what it is we say we believe and so there was stuff like that too. But I’d say in terms of the most amount of like substantive feedback we got it was on the, the episodes about purity and the episodes about authority.

Jim Davis
You know, one of the things that I really appreciate about you is you’re a good cultural exegete. You know, in our theological streams, we tend to be pretty good on biblical exegesis. But cultural exegesis sometimes is a weaker point. And I can see that in the ways that you, you incorporate into your podcast, you bring in elements of church history, things happening around the globe, today, you’ve been a missionary. And I think all my hunch is all of these things come in to make you the cultural xvg. You are, we have this saying, in our church, when we’re hiring somebody, one year of overseas missionary experience equals three years of us experience, because you just you begin to look at the world in a different way. So you do go back to church history, and you look at the church around the globe, both and the resources that you’re sharing the guests you’re having on, can you flesh out this a little more? Why the emphasis on church history and the global church? And in what ways? Does that advance the conversation here in America?

Trevin Wax
Well, part of that is just personal interest. I really love history, and I love church history. So I’ve been interested in that for a long time. The other part of it is just my life story. You know, if one of your admissions experience equals three your mind, then I’ve got 15 Because I was five years in Romania. And you do and you do see, you do come back and see things in your culture with different eyes, because you’ve been outside of it for a lengthy period of time. So I can’t even begin to quantify the impact that overseas mission cross cultural missions experience has had on me personally, and just the way I see the world. So part of it’s just, it’s just my personality. But the other part of it is to I really do think that it’s what the church needs right now is perspective. I just think we’ve got a lot of Christians that don’t have perspective. Like if you’ve got church history perspective, no scandal today will completely shock you. If you know your church history, right and no situation will seem completely hopeless. Because you’ve seen God do amazing things and really dark times. So we need church history for that reason. We also need the global church around the world to recognize you know, like you guys talk about the churches a lot. And there’s an episode of of this coming season where we’re, you know, I’m talking with you guys about this subject, obviously, but in which we talk about the churches of America you know, like you need, you need to know the history of how we got so church before you even know what this D churching movement has become and the impact of it but then we also need to just keep in mind and other parts of the world right now. The church is exploding. I mean, look at China, look at Africa, look at you know, parts of the global south next year. Lord willing, I’m excited to be at the Lausanne Congress for world evangelization that’s going to happen in Seoul with you know, 5000 delegates from all around the globe like,

Jim Davis
I let me let me interrupt you real quick, because I can’t remember who you probably know who wrote this. Maybe it was two years ago, I read, somebody was saying that there are more Christians living today than all the Christians in the first 1900 years combined. Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s just, it’s so different than many people think about, you know, what’s going on in Christianity? Yeah,

Trevin Wax
no, it’s I think that quote came from a Martin old book about the shape of Christianity. And part of that is because there’s just a whole lot more people living today. But but it’s that kind of it’s that kind of perspective, though, that just suddenly, and you know, a lot of the debates that we have, and a lot of the political back and forth and the, you know, what should the church think about this or that you can lower the temperature, if you recognize well, that there’s actually been a variety of positions on this throughout church history. It’s not this is not essential to Christianity, right. And if you also are really engaged with Christians and other parts of the world, it can help you keep your sanity a little bit on some of these heated debates that happen in the United States, you can just be like, well, you know, Christians agree and disagree all over the world on some of these issues, you know, like, and it helps you distinguish, what are the core? What’s the essentials? Versus what are those areas where we can have lively engagement and disagreement, but it does, it does lower the temperature a bit. And so for me, I mean, it’s just bringing in I think one of my favorite moments of the last season was in the was in the final episode. And I mean, I’ve really tried to have guests that are trying to do constructive things. I mean, it’s it’s easy to find people who will critique everything all the time, I really wanted to find like, who are the people who are really helping us build to a better future. And in the last episode of the first season, I had Ajit Fernando in Sri Lanka, Jen Wilkin, here in the States and Tim Keller, and when it comes last interviews, and one of the best moments of the Tim Keller interview, and I did not prompt him, I promise. But Tim said, one of the things the church lacks right now is perspective. And we need the perspective of church history and the global church in order to really understand the moment that we’re living in. It was just like, so perfect, because it’s like he, I’m sure he didn’t listen to the other episodes of the podcast. But he, he basically summed up the whole point of the podcast was to encounter the global church and the church throughout history in order to look at the moment that we’re currently in. And so when he said that, I was just excited, because I thought, okay, that is what we need. I agree. And that’s what I’m trying to do with the podcast.

Mike Graham
I love that you’re thinking about these things. And I don’t really know if Jim, if we’ve really talked about this too much here this season. But like, just in terms of like global perspective, one of the things that Jim and I talk about a lot at Orlando Grace Church is the importance of non anxious leadership. And one of the things that I think, why Jim and I have been able to navigate the last several years successfully, is because of our experience overseas, particularly in Italy with crew, you know, imagine for a moment if you lived in a country of 60 million people. And there’s maybe 40 or 50, gospel centered churches in the whole country. And they average about 40 or 50 people each. And, you know, a 40 person church over there would be like 400, you know, here in terms of, you know, their relative size. So that’s 2000, gospel centered Christians for a country of 60 million. And imagine among those 2000 people, you had 10 discernable tribes, of which all kind of had bad various forms of bad blood with each other. That was the lay of the land in Italy. In further you know, that the situation there was even more dire in the sense of, you have a 2500 plus year old culture of which every institution is kind of profoundly broken, doesn’t work, or has, you know, serious challenges to it. And then when we were over there, we were underneath Silvio Berlusconi, and it didn’t really matter what really happened in the election. It just kind of this guy was kind of in power, whether formally or informally, and he represented a kind of populist right kind of perspective. So imagine if if Donald Trump owned the Yankees, and Publix supermarkets, and CBS and ABC, and maybe had even worse habits with his infidelity? Well, that was Silvio Berlusconi. But the interesting thing about all of that is the situation over there was far more dire than what it was in the United States. And we had far bigger challenges. And the institutional breakdown of that country was far worse than what we’re experiencing here in the United States. Yet, in spite of all of those things, we saw tremendous spiritual We’ll fruit on campus and in the city where we lived. And I think those things have given us tremendous perspective here. I feel like in some ways we always talked about, like, we kind of felt like we got in a time machine and you know, had the benefit of that. So just commending the need and the benefit of having a global perspective. And having that perspective from church history is just super important. And if we want to be constructive leaders moving forward, those are perspectives that we need to have. So I’m grateful that you’ve drawn upon those things. They’re in that first season. I’m really excited about this second season. And I wonder if you could give us a high altitude picture of the focus of this season. For those who either have no context for season one, or looking forward to this next season.

Trevin Wax
The first season was really about the credibility crisis facing the church on it. And on a number of fronts. The second season is, is about okay, we’ve talked about a lot of these areas where the church is has taken a reputational beating some of that very deserved. So in this second season, I’m already assuming people that are listening, that have listened through all 12 of the verses, and they’ve got the heart for wanting to rebuild, and they really, they want to be constructive. So the question that we had going into the second one was, okay, what are some of the obstacles, both internal and external, that the church is going to face in this rebuilding season? Like, what are the things we just we need to be aware of, these are some challenges that we’re going to face. And once I kind of figured out that, that needed to be the direction, it really opened the door a little bit for us to deal with some things that are not necessarily directly related to church failure, but are just challenges that are on the horizon, we’re going to be talking about institutional distrust across the board, not just with the church. I mean, that is a challenge that the church has to reckon with, just like every other institution in the west right now, honestly, you know, we do talk about de churching, we’re going to be talking about the crisis of masculinity, in the culture at large, as well as the, you know, the what I call the secret catastrophe of pornography, both inside and outside the church. We are going to talk about gender identity issues. And you know, I’ve got an interview with some folks who’ve got a lot of expertise on that, but also a real pastoral approach as to okay, how do we actually walk people through our, in our congregations through some of the big challenges that are coming about from that? So we’re going to talk about AI, spiritual burnout, burnout in general, culturally, but then spiritual burnout, as well, you know, some of the challenges that family breakdown brings to the church, you know, just the challenges that we’re having in family life across the US. But we’re even going to talk about issues related to worship and liturgy and denominations like, what’s the future for denominations, networks of churches? You know, there are all sorts of ways that churches like to cooperate together, but we’re in this anti institutional age, what are some of the obstacles that we find there? So it really opened the door a little bit, instead of us just kind of dwelling on hey, how do we remove the rot and fortify the foundations? That was really more season one, season two is okay, we got the gloves on. We’re taking the sledgehammer to some areas that we need to fix. But we really are trying to reconstruct after a pretty big fire, so to speak. So if we’re in that reconstructing phase from the church, what are some of the challenges that are right now or on the horizon that we need to be aware of? So that kind of gave shape to the topics that we’re going to focus on in season two?

Jim Davis
So one of the things that we cover, we have a chapter on embracing exile, and I watched a video that you and I think Sam Albury did on exile? No, it was Alan Noble is Alan noble? That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. I always actually quoting you. Yesterday, I was guest lecturing at RTS. And I thought it was really interesting the way you look at exile. I’ll let you flush it out the two ways older people and younger people look at it because this is just a really good example of like how you’re taking these cultural issues and how I feel like you’re advancing that conversation in such helpful ways.

Trevin Wax
Yeah, I think it was about 10 years ago, I did a I did a column for the gospel coalition that that made the case that older evangelicals tend to say, the United States of America as Israel, basically. And younger evangelicals tended to see the United States as Babylon. And what I meant by that was a lot of older evangelicals see America as sort of, you know, God’s got a special relationship with America, or there’s some sort of particular special plan for America in some way that we’re not God’s chosen people necessarily, in the sense like Israel or the church, but God’s really got a close connection to to the United States. And so if that’s kind of your posture, than any sort of loss of that sense of divinely chosen nation, or the Christian nation, so to speak, is seen as a threat to our existence in the sense that you want to take it back. That was 10 years ago. That’s kind of before the old all the Christian nationalism, conversations and debates and controversies that have have arisen over the last few years. A lot of younger evangelicals, though, already felt like well, that ship has sailed. We’re not really engaging politically as much as we’re engaging pastorelli with just the fact that we live in Babylon we recognize we live in Babylon, we’re trying to carve out a space for ourselves to just have religious freedom and to be able to, you know, to live as faithful exiles or so in the US. A lot of people interpreted that column. And I think I flesh it out a little bit more. And this is our time, a book of mine. But a lot of people interpreted that, as I was saying, the wrong posture is the older evangelical the right posture is the younger Evangelical, but I was actually saying there’s some key areas in which both of those get something really wrong. I don’t think the analogy of Babylon exactly fits over, it doesn’t overlay exactly where we are in the US. And I don’t think that the understanding of metaphor, exactly lines up with, you know, Jeremiah’s instruction to the exiles, for example, I don’t think they’re exactly the same. There is a sense in which we are sojourners and exiles, as Christians, no matter what culture we’re in, no matter when and where So, are we exiles? Absolutely. I mean, Peter says that we are. And that doesn’t just go for the early church, that goes for us too. But I do think if you let the exile language, control everything, and then you begin to make too many applications of one on top of the other, you wind up diminishing some of the agency that we do have in a democratic republic to work for social change that is good, that is to the benefit not only of the church, but of the wider culture. So it can lead to almost sort of a defeatist mentality to where it’s not that we should, we definitely need to stiffen our spines at the threat of persecution or if we undergo persecution at some point in the future. But at the same time, we should do what we can to avoid that situation for our, for us, and for our kids and our grandkids, the exile stuff like from a biblical motif, it’s everywhere in Scripture, it’s part of where you know how we need to see ourselves. But some of those cultural elements, I just think we’ve got to be careful not just doing a one to one correlation, because otherwise, we’re just basically doing the mirror opposite of what the previous generation did with sort of the American Israel analogies. And I just at the end of the day, I just don’t think either one completely works.

Jim Davis
Well, I think you make a really compelling case that we’re not Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, we have more agency, and there’s some ways that we’ve need to steward that agency. But as you look down the tunnel of time you look at your kids and your grandkids, what concerns you the most about the future of the American church?

Trevin Wax
I think the thing that concerns me the most about the future of the American church is that we don’t see our worldliness, that we’re unable to see our worldliness that we’re worldly, and we think we’re righteous. And I think that’s a perennial temptation for the church in any era. So it’s not exactly I mean, I think that’s our danger now, not just for my kids and grandkids. But when I look into the future, I think, I can’t remember who said it. But worldliness is whatever the world takes to make holiness look abnormal, and unrighteousness look like it’s normal. And, and there’s a there’s a sense in which I think one of the biggest traps of Evil One is for us to be engaged in a spiritual battle with worldly tools. And to think because we’re engaging in the ways the world engages, but we’re taking we have the right stance, we have the right position, that we are righteous because of that. But if we are fighting, just like the world, we look just like the world and the way we interact with each other and with our neighbors and whatnot, then we’re just as worldly as the world even if our positions are, you know, quote unquote, biblical. And so I think that’s one of the the big dangers. I do worry about the the state of our culture from a cohesiveness standpoint, just we seem to be fraying. And a lot of ways I don’t think we’ve reckoned with everything that the internet and social media age, just the radical shift in seeing the world in a digital way. Like what all is entailed by that we talk about AI and stuff like that. I’m less worried about machines that are more like humans, I’m more worried about the next generation of humans being more like machines. I think that doesn’t get as much talk because it’s not as cool as the Sci Fi scenarios. But But I do think like sort of the making of the human mind into a machine is actually a bigger challenge. So no, we got a lot of challenges in the future at the same time. There’s just so many reasons to have hope. And

Jim Davis
well, that was my next question. Conversely, what gives you the most hope, looking down the same tunnel of time?

Trevin Wax
Well, I mean, at the end of the day, there’s no cultural exegesis, strategy, podcast season, yours or mine or any others. There’s nothing that is going to ultimately be what is the key thing that’s responsible for someone trusting in Jesus Christ for salvation for someone believing that he actually walked out of the grave on Easter morning, every conversion is a miracle. And if we’ve seen that miracle happen for 2000 years, implausible as it seems, that billions of people across the world today believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead that I made It gives me optimism as well. This is amazing that anyone believes this is amazing. And that people build their whole life around it. It’s just crazy. And you almost have to get out of the Christian bubble, you know, to have conversations with people in the world to recognize just how crazy some of what we believe sounds and at the same time, what an intellectual castle we sort of inhabit, of world changing philosophy, and thought that comes from 2000 years of trying to reckon with the reality of the resurrection. So, if I’ve got optimism, it’s the fact that at the end of the day, it doesn’t depend on us completely, it really is a supernatural intervention. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit that anyone anywhere, believes or continues to believe, the good news of Jesus Christ. So if that’s the case, then I just have to trust that the Spirit is going to keep doing his work in and through us, sometimes in spite of us. And that’s the nature of the church and this generation, as it has been for since the beginning.

Jim Davis
One thing that’s come up in my mind, often in this project, even as we are developing, hopefully, directions that can help us in the season, the parable of the weeds and the wheat, Jesus said, there will be those who look like they’re in the kingdom, and they are not. And so a pure form of the church is better than a less pure form. And, you know, I take hope in the fact that it does seem like even though people are leaving the church, clearly a lot of these people were never Christians to begin with, and they’re better off, we’re all better off if we’re acknowledging where we really are. And obviously, we want them to hear the gospel and receive the gospel, we want that, that miracle of conversion to happen. But But yeah, I think your your emphasis on is the power of the Holy Spirit, anybody who believes is a miracle. He’s been doing this for 1000s of years, and he will continue to do it. And we know how the story ends. So this next season of reconstructing faith, when it ends, what do you want listeners, that the people who who engage from start to finish that listen to the whole season? What do you want them to walk away with? And what ways do you hope that they’re going to be better equipped to engage with the intersection of culture and the Christian faith?

Trevin Wax
Yeah, my hope is that, from a general standpoint, they’re gonna have a better overview of the challenges that the church is has faced in the recent past. And some of the challenges that we’re facing right now we’re gonna face in the future. So I want them to have a general overview. But I hope that because we hit so many different topics, that there’s going to be, I’ve told people this, like, we are not responsible for rebuilding every aspect of the church’s crumbling walls. Like, that’s just, we can’t, we can’t do that the task would be too overwhelming. And so my thought on this, and what I hope people will walk away with if they listened to the second season as well, is that they’ll find two or three areas where they’re like, I can help with that. Like, that’s a part I can help with, you know, I can help with this aspect of the church’s witness, or I can help rebuild in this particular moment. And you got to be able to do that without feeling judged by so and so who’s on a different part of the wall, Who’s mad at you for not being as engaged on that part of the wall as you are on your part of the wall, like, I was telling a guy last week who really has a heart for a particular aspect of the church’s witness, and was saying, I can’t seem to get some of the people around me to all have the same passion. And I’m like, Well, maybe you don’t need to, you know, maybe this is the passion that God has given you that you find the people that are that will be passionate with you and you get to work on that part of the wall. And you just want encourage the other people to be part of rebuilding a different part of the witness. You can’t do everything at once. But we can all do something. And so my hope is that coming to the end of the second season, in particular, people will look at these different challenges. And they’ll have, you know, two or three in particular, that they’re just like, I can help the next generation meet that challenge. I can help with my kids, I can help with young people on my church, I can help with people in our neighborhood, or I can be part of counseling people away from that kind of burnout or this kind of the end to where they really kind of drill down into a couple of those things and realize I’ve got a contribution to make. And they feel a sense of agency and the desire to roll up the sleeves, and to do what needs to be done. The controlling metaphor analogy for the beginning part of season two is the fire at Notre DOM, and just how quickly something that took hundreds of years to build, and has stood for hundreds of years, how quickly something like that can go up in flames and be destroyed and how much painstaking work now, years after that is still going on in order to restore that amazing jewel in our history. That’s kind of a controlling theme for the season. Because I want people to realize there are people working on different parts of that, you know, there’s like a guy that’s working on the spire. There’s other people that are working on other aspects of the scaffolding and the way it works. And so I just want people to walk away from both of the seasons really just saying, Hey, I’ve got some gifts. The Lord has given me some passions and some talents and some gifts. I can be part of that process. Let me put my gloves on, let’s get to work and enough with just sort of the carping from the sidelines all the time against the church. We get it the church is a mess. The church has always been a mess. But at the same time, if the church is going to be around in 50 years, which it is, we got to ask the question, what is it going to look like? What role do we have in what that church will look like then?

Jim Davis
Well, speaking of Notre Dom, we have a little clip here from season two to give everybody a taste of what it is you’re talking about.

Speaker 4
Good evening, it is one of the most famous buildings in the world it has stood on the banks of the river sand for more than 800 years. Tonight, notre dam Cathedral in Paris is completely engulfed by fire. Notre DOM took 200 years to build. It’s one of the greatest treasures of medieval architecture. Tonight, it lies in ruins.

Trevin Wax
It was April 15 2019. I remember sitting next to my wife in our living room, stupefied at the video of fires raging at Notre Dom,

Speaker 4
the latest pictures that we have got showing the true extent of the blaze inside virtually everything alight. As you can see,

Trevin Wax
I’ve never been to Paris. I’ve never been to Notre DOM. And so I wondered why I felt a wave of grief and sorrow sweep over me. What was it about this historic and cultural landmark undergoing destruction that moved me so

Speaker 5
apart that stood here for 800 years through war, revolution, and religious unrest engulfs within an hour by flames. It’s ancient towers, beacons for both residents and tourists crumbling into the blaze. Its current Guardian watched through tears.

Speaker 6
This is a national disaster. I’m very upset. This cathedral is 850 years old. To see the building fall to pieces the spire fall down just as we were renovating it, all I can do is pray.

Trevin Wax
It’s been more than four years since that horrible day when we watched the destruction of Notre DOM. What stands out to me is just how easy and quickly the deconstruction took place. A Gothic structure that took over 200 years to build and stood as a landmark for more than 800 was terribly ravaged by fire within just a few hours. There’s a picture here of institutional fragility, the long and arduous process of building something that endures and how fast something glorious can crumble. Building or rebuilding, it takes a lot of time and effort. But destruction, it too can take a long time. But sometimes, it can happen in moments. In the aftermath of a fire, there’s always further destruction that’s required. When my sister’s house burned a few years ago, she and her family were able to salvage some things. But eventually, what was left of their home had to come down so that rebuilding could take place. The same has been true for Notre Dom, additional parts of the building have been brought down. But the goal is to renew the structure to set the stage for rebuilding and reconstruction. And that’s what is happening now.

Speaker 4
For the last few months, some of the most skilled French hands 50 carpenters and all have been hard at work on a project close to this country’s heart were remarkably just like the carpenters before them. They’re using methods that date back hundreds of years. Well, mostly. This 86,000 square foot warehouse in northeastern France was built just for this purpose, the crafting of Notre Dame’s mighty wooden spire and today we’re getting the first look at the first layer of the spire nearly done.

Trevin Wax
We’re still a year or two away from Notre DOM reopening to the public and the side of that spire as part of the Paris skyline. Once again, it’s been four years already, it may be six or seven before the reconstruction work is complete. All this work, all this labor to restore a structure that in just a few hours went up in flames. Beauty takes time. craftsmanship, care, persistence perseverance.

There’s a Gallup poll that measures the trust people say they have in US institutions from year to year. In the most recent survey, there wasn’t one institution mentioned on the list, from small business to the military to organized religion, criminal justice system, Congress, television news, not one that’s on increase in the percentage of people who said they have a great deal of trust from 2021 to 2022. All continued the trend of decline, the church dropped from 37 to 31. For example, the erosion of institutional trust is one of the most seismic shifts in our culture in society today. Some of that distrust is warranted. In Season One, we looked at the credibility crisis facing the church on several fronts. We’ve looked at some of the corruption in the church raw that needs to be removed. But some of today’s institutional distrust comes from overly idealistic expectations of what institutions can provide, and from the acids seeping into all areas of our culture, slowly dissolving the structures that people in the past built and blessed us with. And so the question for us, as people who love Jesus and His Church is this. How do we rebuild in the aftermath of so much institutional turmoil and destruction? I wanted to begin season two of this podcast with a look at Notre DOM because it provides a picture of our current cultural moment. We’re living in a time when fanning flames is more popular than building structures. There’s something in the air right now, that makes the idea of tearing something down, more thrilling than building something up. Maybe it’s because we underestimate and undervalue the difficulty of creating and cultivating something new. Maybe it’s because of our natural distrust of institutions, our suspicions toward power, the deconstructive itch that finds more pleasure in critique and criticism than creation and construction. Paper, it’s because we feel let down by so many people, and so many institutions we admired or trusted. There are good reasons to use sledgehammers in the aftermath of a disaster. sledgehammers have their place. But sledgehammers can’t help us build anything will need a hammer and nails for that. And a commitment to setting our sights on the long term future of seeing something new arise. I’m Trevin wax, Vice President of Research and resource development at the North American Mission Board. You’re listening to reconstructing faith. In this series, we address different challenges facing the church today, offering perspective from church history, and the global church. So that we meet this moment with a posture of faith, not fear, to the power of the Spirit. I hope you’ll join me on this journey. And consider what you can contribute to the task of restoring and rebuilding, working toward a healthier body of Christ in the days ahead. This is the first episode of season two. sledgehammers don’t build anything.

Jim Davis
So what’s the timeline on season two?

Trevin Wax
So Season Two should begin dropping one episode a week in October through the end of the year?

Jim Davis
Well, I am excited to hear them reconstructing faith cevin I am thankful for your work in many areas. I don’t just say this, you have been a blessing both from afar and in person in some pretty crucial ways in our ministry here, and I’m really thankful for it. I’m thankful for your faithfulness, you’re the real deal. And that means a lot to us. So thank you for your time being with us here. And we’re going to be praying for reconstructing faith podcast, you have expertises and experiences that we do not. And we are a body working together. And we’re just thankful to be able to run in different ways and for you to take certain balls farther than we could and go in different directions than we’re called to go. But we’re moving the same direction to build up the church and to see God glorified. So thanks so much.

Trevin Wax
Well, thank you. It’s an honor to be with you guys and appreciate all the great work you guys do.

Jim Davis
Well, and to everybody listening. Thank you. This is the last episode of season three. We are in conversations about what season four is going to look like. We don’t know. We’re happy to hear from you. If you have any, any thoughts or encouragement in that end, we’re thankful for you and your engagement and we look forward to being back on here sometime in the future. Between now and then, blessings.